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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wbmw who wrote (238932)	8/16/2007 3:24:11 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

wbmw, Just to spell it out for everyone, Z-RAM in an existing design would most likely require: - New cache cell design (at the very least!) Of course - Likely process tweaks or modifications The claim is that it is minimal - Reliability verification, additional parity or hardened latches may be required on an unproven design That may be ongoing as we speak, in test chips. This is where the hang-up is currently, IMO. - Performance simulation to determine best size and design parameters That's not really a big deal, IMO. Caches have been around for decades, and the issues are pretty much settled. Additionally, L3 in Barcelona is a complete black box, its effects easily simulated. Well, easily compared to other challenges in core, memory controller, crossbar design. ...-- and quite possible necessitate additional steppings to iterate on the design and fix bugs on a technology that has not yet been proven in any AMD design before it. First of all, I don't know the first thing about designing microprocessors, but it seems to me that a logical way to go about this is to build test modules (standalone, without processor) and fiddling with that. As I said, it is a black box, so the issuing requests / testing results and timing them, testing reliability should not be all that difficult to test. This is, IMO, what AMD is doing currently, and it is kind of like inventing a wheel, since nobody has any experience with this technology, AMD is doing it first, which is why it is taking a while, Joe

To: wbmw who wrote (238932)	8/16/2007 3:42:22 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

"Taken altogether, this is a heavy modification of the design and requires a lot of additional work." Thank you for finally stating your position instead of just handwaving. We could have saved a lot of bandwidth if you had only done this when first asked.